The official name for Human Design Gate 6 is The Gate of Friction. But I call it The Peacemaker because its primary action is to use conflict as a doorway into inner peace.
About Human Design Gate 6 – Gene Key 6
Archetype Name: The Peacemaker
In Action: use conflict as a gateway into peace
Keywords: creating inner peace, conflict resolution, and emotional empowerment
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Official Gate Name: Friction
Human Design Definition: The fundamental design component of progress. The law that growth cannot exist without friction.
Core Theme: Fear of intimacy.
Bodygraph Center: Emotional Solar Plexus center and connects to the Sacral center via human design gate 59.
Tropical Sign: Virgo
(Want all of the correspondences and keynotes for the gates of your incarnation cross? The Human Design Map is for you.)
The Energy Spectrum of Human Design Gate 6
All energy in the Human Design chart exists on a spectrum of potential.
On the “positive” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 6 is the energy for using conflict as a doorway into inner peace. Gate 6 understands that individual emotional stability and clarity create stability and clarity in relationships. With this knowing, it takes full responsibility for its emotions before “confronting” others and doesn’t engage in needless confrontation.
On the “negative” end of the spectrum, Human Design Gate 6 is the energy for emotional volatility or reactivity that creates chaos in the outer world. Gate 6 can tend towards fighting for things that don’t matter or projecting unresolved emotions onto others. This all contributes to unnecessary conflict in relationships.
If you don’t like the results that the “negative” side of the spectrum is creating in your life, you can raise the frequency of Gate 6 with a number of boundaries, practices, and tools.
I cover the boundaries and practices for all four gates in your incarnation cross in the Human Design Map.
The most important thing to raise the frequency of gate 6 is to create plenty of time and space to reach emotional clarity before acting and take full responsibility for your emotions. This will help you to discern what needs to be communicated (or confronted) and what conflicts to simply let go of.
My personal contemplation of Human Design Gate 6 (Gene Key 6)
A while back, in my post about Human Design Gate 4 and forgiveness, I wrote about how contemplating the gates to write the posts for the Human Design Gates Library always seems to arrive in such Divine Timing. The synchronicity blows my mind almost every time.
And that is definitely happening here with this gate 6 contemplation.
Before I start writing these posts, I always review the material I have already written about the gate for the Human Design Map.
As I scanned my database, I came across these words in the “positive” expression of Gate 6:
Using your emotional clarity to know which conflicts are worth resolving and which ones aren’t.
Suddenly, my chart, with hanging gate 59 flashed before my eyes.
Gate 59 is all about vulnerability and breaking down walls to intimacy; it is the harmonic gate to gate 6 (meaning, they make a full channel together).
I have gate 59.5 hanging and defined in my unconscious mars.
(I go into a bit more detail about mars in the gate 59 post.)
But, in short, our unconscious mars is one of our core relational wounds, and understanding this part of my design was really important.
For a long time, as I mentioned in the gate 59 post, I have tried to just be more and more vulnerable in the hopes of breaking down the walls and have often done so to my detriment.
I’ve had countless relationships where vulnerability was not a two-way street, and, in some cases, my vulnerability was even used as a weapon against me.
I started to realize that, as Brene Brown says, all people hadn’t “earned the right” to my vulnerability. And I started being more discerning about who and where I was vulnerable.
What never dawned on me, though, until contemplating gate 6 to write this post was that the people who have “earned the right” to my vulnerability are the people who take responsibility for their emotions. They don’t make a habit of blaming others for their inner states of being. And they don’t create relational chaos with their projections.
In other words, they are in the “positive” frequency of gate 6 (or are at least attempting to be!).
When I look at the relationships where I thrive, this is true every single time, and any time it isn’t, the relationship goes south. I don’t stay in relationships with people who aren’t capable of emotional maturity.
I recently ended a relationship with someone because of this very thing. My spleen said NO to further contact and I finally listened. After decades, I walked away.
But it’s a decision I’ve been mentally struggling with because I’ve had the story that I’m a terrible person for ending it and that I should just try harder. I’ve thought maybe I should be even more vulnerable and open. And I’ve questioned if I’m really the crazy one here or if I have a right to such strong boundaries.
But, now, I can see, plain as day, what my spleen knew all along.
I don’t have the energy to maintain relationships with people who are in the “negative” frequency of gate 6. It isn’t a healthy place to be for my well-being.
I’m letting the guilt trip go now. And, as they say in Human Design, it isn’t actually personal, it’s mechanical.
And that is so good to know.
Now it’s your turn to contemplate Gate 6
When you stand in the truth that the gifts of gate 6 are always available to you (whether it’s defined in your chart or not)…
What patterns have you noticed in the conflicts you experience in relationships?
Do you depend on others to change before you can achieve emotional peace? How is that working for you?
What would taking full responsibility for your emotions look like in your relationships right now? And how might that heal conflicts?
I encourage you to take some time with these questions. Take them out into your world and let their answers reveal themselves to you. Intend for deeper levels of clarity about gate 6.
And, if you have gate 6 in your Human Design Incarnation Cross, be sure to check out the Human Design Map where I go super deep into each gate of your cross.